


Sure

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Lost
Genre: First Time, M/M, Secret Relationship, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Sawyer have a clandestine relationship that's getting harder and harder to hide, for both of them. Set circa "The Long Con."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sure

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal.

Jack sat with his back to the bonfire, watching the gold tones of evening settle down into a thin band of rust that seared the cold, hard line where the ocean met the horizon. The rest of the sky, everything except the part that approached a vivid separation with the gray-blue-green-black of the water, was all pale, almost washed-out color, yellows and oranges mixing asymmetrically, a curious balance that his brain wanted to right. He even tilted his head, as if to make that one cove of stark creamsicle orange look lower, straighter, so that it didn't overtake the mellower empty yellow-white of the top of the sky.  
  
This was Jack's nightly ritual now, barring any calamity. Like everything else on the island, watching the sun set was a mixed blessing. Before, in the real world, he'd rarely had the time much less taken it. But he had the time now, so he watched the sun set. It made him feel absolutely small, but that was strangely comforting.   
  
He'd always lived his life by accumulation, pulling people and things and tasks into orbit around him, to obsess over. Of course, he was a master at not worrying, of sublimating everything until he was convinced it wasn't a problem. He turned it into energy until he felt like he walked through his life with power and determination and control. The hard thing about being on the island was that it gave him so many new worries; and the hard thing about having the time to watch sunsets was it forced a wedge of time into those carefully-repressed fears. It made him deal with each problem, up close and personal and in turn, until he couldn't avoid seeing that he had too many. Some he'd sought out, pulled to him; others had drifted into his life like flakes of wet snow into a neat pile, heavy, right at his door.  
  
He knew in a way he hadn't before the plane crash that he had never learned how to let go of anything in his life or even learned to stop gathering things, but he felt like life was trying to teach him now. Every day when he watched the warmth dissipate from the sky, vanishing like the steam of that deep orange sun now cooled down into the ocean; when he felt the blue, then the black, well up like ink and cast itself over the sky, he knew—every day he knew, now—that he wasn't in charge. Thinking of all the things he couldn't change was frightening, but for some of them, some of the oldest of those problems he'd held tight in his fist, it was a really nice feeling to know that the waves and the wind and the small pinpricks of starlight were helping take it all away. He was learning to lay things aside, or to shed them, or even have them stripped away—all but the most important, the ones he couldn't change. He felt clean but naked. And that was the most frightening thing of all.  
  
When he turned around, back toward the fire, watching the way the firelight painted the wall of jungle trees in brassy gold, his eyes immediately discerned a figure leaned up against one, just at the edge of the fireglow's reach. Almost instantly, but with his typical carefully-calculated nonchalance, Sawyer pushed himself off the tree and was walking toward him, and Jack suddenly felt wide awake, aware of all the sensations and sounds he'd been tuning out as he focused on the sky and the water. He couldn't help but smile for a moment to feel how Sawyer had the ability to make his pulse hum through his veins, as his body seemed to remember all the things they'd done and had yet to do. Even with his serious face—a gruffness put-upon for the benefit of any possible audience they might have—Sawyer cut straight through Jack's gloom and introspection. He was probably the only reason Jack strayed outside his head anymore, the only reason he would even want to.  
  
He sat down beside him, but not too close. It had only been three days since Sawyer pulled the con nobody would've guessed Jack was also behind. All they saw was Sawyer taking control of the guns through a rather elaborate set-up that involved false reports of attacks—to put Ana and Sayid on edge—and apparently dividing and conquering Jack and Locke. No one much wanted to get close to Sawyer, let alone did they expect to see Jack doing so. They never even suspected Jack's part—or any of this—so they couldn't see it, and that suited the two of them just fine. Except on a night like this when Sawyer could sit within arms' reach, but only if he didn't dare reach out those arms to touch him.  
  
"Doc," he said.  
  
"Hey."  
  
He let his gaze flicker over Sawyer's face for a moment, but the man was already staring into the fire. Sawyer bent his knees and commenced picking at the hem of his jeans. Jack's eyes stuck for a moment on the look of his bicep, the faded black cotton t-shirt cutting across it, but then he let out a breath and looked into the fire too.  
  
Sawyer finally mumbled, "It's hot as hell over here."  
  
"Last time I checked, nobody forced you to sit down by the fire."   
  
"Sure enough. I'm just curious why you couldn't find a better spot. Thought you were sleeping in the hatch these days." It was a question, a veiled one. Sawyer knew exactly where he slept; what he didn't know was where he could find him that half the camp wouldn't be circled around him.   
  
Jack just shook his head. "Not when I don't have to. I've been sleeping out here with everybody else."  
  
"'Cause you're one of them now, huh?"  
  
"I always was," he said, but that wasn't true. He'd always kept himself apart from them; he understood that now. Having Sawyer seem to strip away his power had made them more sympathetic to Jack, made him seem more human or something. Jack continued, "I'm surprised they haven't run you off yet." He paused long enough to get Sawyer to meet his eyes for a moment. "I don't think there's anybody left at the caves to be pissed off at you."   
  
Sawyer nodded unobtrusively, then his voice ramped back up again: "So, what the hell are you moping about tonight? Or maybe it's just you pondering your next act of hero-ism. Going for the Nobel peace prize, or are you just working on that cure for cancer?"  
  
Jack shook his head, trying not to smile too much at Sawyer's tone. Sure, it was requisite grousing, attitude cast into the wind so that those people still scurrying across the beach wouldn't think they were having anything like a serious conversation, just like they wouldn't know Sawyer sometimes kissed him so hard and deep it felt a little like drowning; but whether anyone was watching or not, Sawyer was prone to behaving just like this—as though he didn't understand what made Jack the way he was. Maybe he didn't know, Jack reasoned. But Jack felt like he was starting to really get Sawyer, so surely Sawyer was figuring him out. He wasn't that complex. Fucked-up, fractured into pieces, but not complex like Sawyer.  
  
Jack said, "Don't you have somewhere to be? Someplace else to sneak into, to steal things?"  
  
Sawyer rolled his eyes. Genuine eye roll. Then he raised his eyebrows and surreptitiously flicked his hand out to tap Jack's waistband.   
  
Jack smiled, almost too much. He suddenly felt a little flushed, just this side of giddy, shaky; like he had that day Sawyer first started speaking again, after he'd come back to camp from the disastrous trip on the raft. Jack had been nursing him back to health, fully aware that he was probably half in love with the man and it wouldn't come to anything. He'd been there before, falling for a straight man, as well finding himself lusting after a bad boy, totally unsuitable—not that either thing usually stopped him. But maybe he wasn't fully aware, though; he couldn't let himself be. He clung to his doctor's detachment, keeping his hands off him as much as possible, just breathing and watching and not feeling.   
  
He'd managed to rein in his emotions until the day of Shannon's funeral, when Kate came to find him, breathless from running through the jungle. Sawyer was awake, she said, and Jack ran back with her, flying to Sawyer's bedside and sitting down before he even thought about what he was doing. He leaned over him and felt his forehead, and then his hands were skimming and skating over Sawyer's whole body. He touched his neck and grasped his good arm, and when his palm slid over Sawyer's warm chest, he quickly covered, pretending he was feeling Sawyer's heartbeat.   
  
Sawyer let his own hand fall on top of Jack's as he said in a weak, low, scratchy voice, "You ain't killed me yet, Doc." Then his hand was gone, but there had been a mischievous smile on his face, one so perfectly Sawyer that Jack couldn't help but smile in return. He felt it all then, all the worry and fear and this enormous amount of hope. He realized that Sawyer had always had that effect on him. Sawyer said he hadn't seen it then, hadn't felt it, not on any conscious level; but how didn't he see something that big? How didn't he know?   
  
Jack looked at him again, but he was staring through the fire. "What do you want?" Jack said, forcing a harsh tone.  
  
"I done said," he mumbled, rolling his eyes in a way that he knew would make Jack chuckle ordinarily. Then he added, louder, "'Course, I wouldn't expect you to give a damn."  
  
"It's really hard to give a damn about someone who doesn't care about anybody but himself."  
  
Sawyer frowned. Fake frown. His eyes sparkled when he replied, "We can't all be the island Mother Teresa, Doc."  
  
Jack was about to retort when he suddenly felt tired. Some nights, they enjoyed this stage play. The bickering and bantering was a part of the thing, even when they were alone together. But tonight he was really weary of having to constantly think about the image they were presenting to everyone; tonight, when it was more important than ever, after the thing about the guns. They hadn't even spoken in the three days since it happened, must less took the chance of meeting each other, and it had nearly driven Jack crazy. He'd thought it was bad when he was nursing a crush that he was sure wouldn't come to anything. Now that he'd had him—as a friend, in his arms—not having him was even harder.  
  
Jack didn’t say anything. He just looked at Sawyer, hard and pleading, before his eyes drifted blankly to the fire. Sawyer's eyes stayed on him, though. He could feel it.  
  
Sawyer said quietly, "What?"  
  
"Tired," he mumbled.  
  
"Of?"  
  
"This," he said, gesturing almost imperceptibly with his head to the space between them.  
  
Sawyer sighed, and he let his legs down until they lay flat against the sand, the left one only inches from Jack's legs. Then he let his ankle roll until his boot caught the edge of Jack's. "You're the one—"  
  
"I know."  
  
"It's smart, anyway. I know that."   
  
Was it smart? Jack wondered. Or was it just easier to avoid dealing with people's inevitable reaction? Jack thought that maybe he was simply jealous of this thing, so much that he'd go through this kind of bullshit to keep it between them, something only they could even know about, much less understand. There was a small part of him that knew, though, that as strong as his feelings were this thing was fragile as hell. Who knew what would happen if people knew, if they started questioning him. No, not him—Sawyer. What would Sawyer be willing to endure for him? He had no idea.  
  
The beach was fairly empty now that the night had really settled in. But if there was one place on the beach where people came after dark, it was the bonfire. Or at least their eyes would be drawn there. This was the least safe place for them to forget to behave as though they mistrusted and hated each other. Sawyer knew it, too. He stood up abruptly and took a drink from his water bottle and moved a quarter of the way around the fire from Jack. He tossed his hair back and sat down with a flourish—definitely forced because Sawyer seemed to be sharing Jack's contemplative mood.   
  
Jack could feel Sawyer's physical absence, even though he hadn't even laid a finger on him. But now that he wasn't sitting beside him, Jack could watch him as much as he wanted, read the green-blue of his eyes, the way they glowed in the firelight. Of course, he couldn't lay his hand on the man, even just to tap his knee or squeeze his shoulder or run careful fingers over Sawyer's rough palm. He couldn't do what he really wanted, either, which was to straddle him, knees in the sand, to kiss him and grind their hips together until they were both hard and Sawyer tore his mouth away and clutched at Jack's neck, panting into his ear. And Sawyer couldn't lay him back and climb up over him and with his solid body press Jack into the sand until there was nothing else in the world but Sawyer's hot weight on top of him, narrow hips and tight shoulders and gold hair falling over his face.  
  
They couldn't touch each other, but Jack could keep talking. It somehow seemed intimate, even if they had to consider an unseen audience. He couldn't talk entirely freely, but then again, Sawyer wouldn't be listening freely either. If Jack was quiet, if he was careful, he could talk. And Sawyer would have to listen.   
  
"I was watching Charlie and Claire the other day, and it made me think." Jack said, "You ever been married?"   
  
Sawyer shook his head. "Never wanted to."  
  
"No?"  
  
"Are you kidding me?"  
  
"Well, it's just that I think most people are hard-wired to feel like they should be with somebody. When they're not, it feels like something's missing."  
  
"Well, there are a whole lot of ways to fill up that space, Doc," he said, leering just a little. But Jack also saw a trace of impatience there.  
  
"I always knew that if I wasn't with someone, something wasn't complete for me. It was this constant thing, always in the back of my mind. I was looking for it. Nothing else mattered as much as it should if I didn't have that."  
  
"So you got married," Sawyer said. Loudly: "Like that's a big surprise. Me, I always felt like being with somebody tied me down. We're the exact opposite, you and me. I was always looking to get back to being alone again. That's what felt right."  
  
"Felt?" he said quietly.  
  
"Feels. Felt. Whatever." He gave Jack a wry smile.  
  
Jack took a deep breath then, his chest too tight. "Well, I never liked being alone. Until after I got divorced. Then I was sure being alone was easier."  
  
"But that didn't work for you, I'm guessing." Disdain. Irritation. Fake.  
  
"No, it worked just fine. I got really good at convincing myself that I didn't care. Even when we crashed here, I was still telling myself that."  
  
"Well, that's smart, I guess…for a guy like you." Sawyer said as he stood up. Jack didn't know if he was trying to keep up their charade or head off one of Jack's more serious admissions at the pass. It wasn't as though Sawyer was opposed to having frank discussions with him about most things, when they could find someplace to be alone, where they didn’t have to put on this act. But he typically deflected any talk that began with the word 'we,' preferring to just stumble along and let things develop without talking about them and pushing them.   
  
But he walked toward him, typical Sawyer-posture completely at odds with his eyes. As he took a pre-made torch from the pile beside Jack, he lit it and turned back. With a sneer but in a low, serious tone: "But let me guess. It ain't working anymore. You do care."   
  
"No," Jack said.   
  
Sawyer just made a perplexed face, then he shook his head and paused there for a moment. Jack could only see him in profile, and he couldn't read his expression. Finally, Sawyer moved again, crossing behind him, and he reached down as he did and slid his hand over the back of Jack's neck and said, low, "After awhile?"  
  
Jack nodded and dropped his head as Sawyer's warm hand pulled away and left him with goose flesh. Sawyer turned back to give him another look, this one smug in a way that suited the man who was the current keeper of the survivors' collective arsenal, before he headed for that line of trees burnished bronze.   
  
When he was a few paces away, Jack called his name and he looked back.   
  
Jack hadn't known what he was going to say, only that he needed to say something. Then the words came out: "It _wasn't_ working. I _did_ care. But it's not really an issue anymore. Might have something to do with you."  
  
He knew he shouldn't have said it, even so cryptically. Sawyer froze, and for a moment, he let his shoulders drop into his chest. When he gave Jack a hard look in the next second, as he pulled his shoulders back up, Jack had no idea if that look was genuine or for the benefit of whoever it was still lingering at the shoreline, yards away. Probably it was both.   
  
But Sawyer was in rare form when he tossed his next words over his shoulder: "Bout time you understood that it's best for me to have some control of things around here."  
  
"Control you stole," Jack called back, heart pounding, from nerves or from the joy of being back in that banter with him, he didn't know.  
  
Sawyer spun around for a moment, but he kept his face flat when he said, "Not my fault I caught you off guard." Then his face lit into a sly grin momentarily before he spun again and ambled off into the woods.  
  
*****  
  
The way Sawyer had always seen it, relationships were for the scared. People sought out all these feelings and let them take them over because they wanted security. What surprised Sawyer as he lit a small bonfire at the caves was how absolutely wrong he had been. Sure, if a man wants to feel safe and stable, that's what he gets, even if it comes from the least safe and stable person on the face of the planet, apparently. But the inverse was also true: the least threatening, most ridiculously cautious person on God's green earth made Sawyer feel more out of control than he had possibly ever felt. His emotions rode a hard line between terror and exhilaration. He thought maybe it was just where he wanted to be.  
  
He didn't know why he had stood there so long, watching Jack, except he just couldn't fucking help it. He didn't want to think too long and hard about why that was. He also didn't want to think about what sort of mood Jack would be in when he got out there. He'd have to take him like he came, even if he was still moping. Or worse. Sawyer had to take Jack any way he could get him.   
  
Sawyer lay beside the fire, but he was tired of staring at it. Brooding like that wasn't his style, and it wasn't going to make things any clearer. That could only come from doing. But he wasn't exactly sure how to proceed, not with the problems of the island and not with Jack. He'd dealt with fragile women before, even a few of the anal-retentive variety, but he had never met anyone as obstinate as Jack. And it _was_ obstinacy. Sometimes the man held onto things just to be holding. But Sawyer felt like he might have a handle on Jack by now. Sawyer was sure he was more stubborn than the man about 95 percent of the time, so he could pry that fist loose and make him turn those things over. The problem was that he was left holding it all, and while it wasn't as though Sawyer couldn't deal with things, these were Jack's problems, not at all the kind of responsibility he was used to or ever wanted.  
  
He'd thought the guns would be easy. He knew guns. They were just these cold pieces of steel, violent things that required a man's hand to bring out the violence. Hold your hand steady, they were steady. Let go, and they let go. But something about the guns made Sawyer nervous. Holding one in his hand suddenly made him less than cool and calm. But there was no way in hell he was giving them back. He was sure of that. When they planned it, Jack had thought the con would just shift the balance of power on the surface, that he would still be just as in charge as he'd always been, where it counted, only he could subvert Locke's mind games and literally keep Sayid and Ana somewhat in check in the process. Jack still didn't really know how much then con was on him. It was a good con, too, because he hadn't figured out how pointedly Sawyer was keeping him from any responsibility over those guns. Jack thought he'd willingly turned over control, and maybe he had, in part; but, really, Sawyer had taken it, and even if it pissed Jack off, he wouldn't lay that on him again. He wouldn't tell him where the guns were, because as unsteady as Sawyer's hands were anymore, Jack's were a hell of a lot less steady. Even Jack had to see that.  
  
Sawyer sighed and climbed up into the cave, laying down just at the lip of it, on his back, staring up at the break in the trees. The fire was useless for stabilizing him, but the moon had a strange power over him. It instantly made him calm. Sometimes he thought it was like the only real thing in that black expanse of sky. If he could touch it, he was sure it would be solid, cool and smooth like ivory, but textured, as it was layered with shadows that made it seem both approachable and mysterious, all at once.   
  
The moon had always been one of his touchstones. A man with no real home needs things that feel familiar, so Sawyer had built himself a personal mythology made up of disparate things that felt like they were his, that grounded him. Most of those things were gone now, or at least so far away they might as well be gone: his duffle bag full of books, his father's wristwatch, his bottle of sand from Key West, his tacky keychain from Gatlinburg. And then there were the less tangible things, like his habit of tipping waitresses way too much if they looked too happy to really be happy, or the fact that wherever he went, no matter what radio station he was picking up, he was always stumbling across The Doors, always Jim Morrison's voice screaming about breaking on through to the other side or L.A. women. Hell, he didn't even like The Doors that much, but hearing those songs felt like a part of his life. There weren't many parts like that here with him on the island—just the moon and, somewhere behind the trees, the constellation Orion: the hunter, always moving across the sky as though he were hunted, too.   
  
He'd spent his life picking up things only to drop them so soon he couldn't remember most of them. When you never stay in one place, you learn not to get attached to anything. He never thought about how much he depended on those few things he kept because he was always moving. Sometimes he had to leave simply to make sure he still could. So what did he do now that he'd found someplace he couldn’t escape? Did he start amassing things again? Sure. He gathered it all up, but it didn't make him feel any more alive. He'd left it all behind, then, got on that raft as a new way to run to prove that he could. And then that same fate that always sent Jim Morrison to drive him crazy brought him right back to the island, back to the one person he'd been the most eager to turn loose.   
  
"Thank God," he mumbled, then he laughed and laughed until his face hurt. "Thank God for uptight, control-freak assholes with martyr complexes." It had been one of those type of men, the kind he had never had much use for, that saved his life. As he lay there, Sawyer felt some of his tension drifting up out of him, rising through the air, leaving him cool as the moon but also a little more clear of mind than he'd meant to be. As soon as that raft left, he should've known. Maybe he did know. Maybe he always knew exactly what it was he was running from.  
  
Sawyer was fully aware that Jack was a fucked-up human being indeed. It was easy to see, and it didn't take a psychiatrist to figure out why. What he didn't know was how in the holy hell he was supposed to deal with a man who couldn't make sense of his own brain and heart but sure as hell wanted to inflict that stew of unmanageable emotion and over-thinking on him. Especially since he had his own big tangled ball of problems he didn't have the first clue how to even begin to unravel.  
  
Sawyer was contentedly staring up at the moon, knowing it didn't have any answers and not really wanting any, when Jack came into the clearing and stopped on the other side of the fire.  
  
"'Bout fucking time," Sawyer said placidly.  
  
"Got hung up. Sorry."  
  
"You ain't sorry. If somebody didn't way-lay you with a hang-nail, you'd be disappointed."  
  
Jack snorted. "So you think I wasn't at all eager to come out here and see you?"  
  
"You're the one still standing on the other side of the fire, Jackass."  
  
He expected Jack to move then, but he didn't. Thankfully, he didn't look like he was about to say anything heavy, either. In fact, he seemed a little bit sheepish, like maybe he was afraid of talking because he'd done too much. That should've been comforting to Sawyer, but it wasn't.  
  
So he offered, "It's pretty damn funny."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You talking shit about my stealing things. Me saying I caught you off guard. Wasn't nobody as caught off guard as I was when you decided to spring all this on me."  
  
Jack frowned and ducked his head. "I know. I'm sorry. I was just out there thinking too—"  
  
"No, look, hey. I meant before." With a smirk, he said, "Long time back."  
  
"Oh," Jack said as recognition spread over his face in a knowing smile. "You're still gonna say you didn't know?"  
  
"Want me to recount the particulars? James Ford, womanizer. Never kissed nobody with chest hair and stubble on his face until you came along."  
  
"But you didn't punch me."  
  
"What?"  
  
"When I kissed you, you didn't punch me. It was like you were expecting it."  
  
"Not a bit. You're just a damn good kisser is all." Jack just shook his head, but he didn't make any move toward him. Something was off. Jack was being even more hesitant than normal, and it made him nervous. Jack was becoming more and more confident about most things…except him, apparently. So he snapped: "Will you get your ass over here, for fuck's sake."  
  
Jack started a bit at his tone, but he quickly recovered. "Ah, there's that famous southern charm," he said as he shuffled toward him, voice even and amused and entirely more calm than his face allowed for.   
  
When he sat down at the lip of the cave, Sawyer pulled himself up, looking over bent knees at Jack, who was staring pretty unabashedly at him under heavy lids.  
  
Jack said, "You should always wear black."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Makes you sort of shine."  
  
"Aw hell."  
  
"I'm serious, Sawyer. I know you don't like to hear it, but do you have any idea how good you look to me?"  
  
Sawyer just frowned, although it was hard to hold that face when Jack's eyes looked so clear and coppery-green with the firelight shining into them. Jack sat there, his hand on the cool stone between them, like they were still at the fire and he couldn't touch him; and he just stared at him, so hard it made him feel fidgety. There was so much trust in that gaze but equally as much apprehension, as though he couldn't help what he was feeling, maybe didn't want to, but he was sure, deep down, it was unwise. Sawyer desperately wanted to make it seem wiser than it probably was, for the both of them.  
  
"What's got you so spooked tonight?" Sawyer said.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"Sure."  
  
He took a deep breath, and Sawyer could see that he was trembling, almost imperceptibly. When he saw that Sawyer noticed, he held up his hand. "You wouldn't think a surgeon could forget how to make his hands stop shaking." The way his voice was shaking made Sawyer's heart suddenly beat against the inside of his chest.  
  
"You just gotta give 'em something to do."  
  
"I know." But he still didn't make a move. Instead, he stared at the fire.  
  
"Jesus Christ, Doc. Are you the same man who cornered me in the hatch and laid one on me?"  
  
"What's stopping _you_?"   
  
"What's stopping—Oh, for God's sake," he sighed, grabbing Jack by the back of the head, pulling his face forward and kissing him.  
  
Jack responded instantly, like he always did. After the last few of weeks sneaking around but managing to find each other several times a day to do this, it was still pretty amazing, the way Jack opened up and let him in, welcomed his lips and tongue. His hands usually found something to clench, and even his body was sometimes awkwardly stiff at first, but his mouth was always wet and hot and waiting to be claimed.   
  
But tonight there was an urgency there, right from the beginning, that Sawyer hadn't expected. He should have, given Jack's state of mind, but he'd honestly been expecting to coax him out, touch him and talk to him until he unwound a little and let Sawyer have his way. What he was just learning was how the more Jack seemed closed up inside himself, the more there was he was covering up. Even if Jack didn't mean to, as soon as he opened up to Sawyer, it was all right there to be tasted on his lips and felt in the pull of his body.  
  
So Sawyer pushed harder. Once Jack finally let go, he was strong and almost overwhelming, but Sawyer usually had to spur him on to it. He got the distinct impression that it wasn't as though Jack didn't want to be that way; it was more like he was waiting for Sawyer's permission. So Sawyer was quickly learning to do things to make Jack come alive faster, push back against him until they were both somehow in control at the same time. He wondered if that was one of the differences in being with a man: a different balance of power. Not better, just different. No, better—because maybe Jack was better.  
  
Sawyer's hand slid along Jack's jaw and under his ear. His thumb pulled at Jack's bottom lip, and Sawyer's tongue darted over it and slid along Jack's, so fast and sloppy Jack groaned into the kiss, and Sawyer just grabbed his head harder, pulled him closer, fucked him with his tongue too fast at first, then slower, so slow and smooth that he found he was swaying against Jack's body, dipping toward him and feeling Jack press him back again. For a minute, it was just this deliberate, sublime thing, slow and heady, but then he began to feel Jack really begin to take over. Jack's hand held solid and hot against his chest began to drift and the kiss became more forceful, less controlled. It had been so good, but they'd both been breathing steady; suddenly, Sawyer felt his adrenaline spiking again, and he struggled for air.   
  
Before he knew it, he was on his back again, Jack's hand still on his chest and Jack's mouth still on his. Sawyer pulled him by the hips until he was squarely on top of him, straddling him and grinding their cocks together, and Sawyer felt like his whole body was throbbing—wanting, needing more of Jack, to be touched more and everywhere, to be pressed harder and harder into the blanket and the cold floor of the cave. He couldn't remember the last time someone made him feel out of control like that. Even when he let the woman be in charge, he was still firmly in possession of his brain and his body. With Jack, though, he couldn't seem to even get his bearings, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to. But, God, he didn’t dare open his eyes. As good as it felt—even all the fucking _feeling_ Jack spoke with his hands—he couldn't look at the man.  
  
Finally, Jack broke the kiss, panting and shaking his head. "Sorry."  
  
"What in the hell you sorry for?"  
  
"I just…God, Sawyer, I wanted to do that earlier, but I couldn't."  
  
"At the fire?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Sawyer chuckled and pulled Jack's hips tighter to his. "Funny. I was thinking the same damn thing."  
  
"Yeah?" Jack's hands slid up under his shirt, smooth across the plane of his abdomen—tracing, skimming, making him shiver.  
  
"Well, except for with less clothes. If you can stand me getting out of this black t-shirt."  
  
Jack just chuckled and shook his head and then dropped back down over his torso and sucked at the pulse point on his neck as his hands wandered down his stomach, stopping at the hem of his shirt but quickly finding the button on his pants, then the zipper.  
  
"I think you skipped a step there," Sawyer mumbled, but only half-heartedly. Jack pulled his jeans down his hips, then his hand glided over the cotton of his boxer shorts.   
  
"Shut up," he mumbled. Then his mouth was back on Sawyer's again as his hand worked its way into the boxers and gripped him tight, just the way he himself liked to be touched, Sawyer had learned. He stroked him slow, almost enough to drive him insane but not quite. It just made the arousal deeper, building slow like a fire in the pit of his stomach until his whole body radiated heat just like Jack's above him.  
  
He felt himself grasping at whatever part of Jack he could get his hands on—his arms, his hips, his ass. When his hand slid over Jack's crotch, Jack sighed into his mouth and broke the kiss. His mouth rested against Sawyer's neck; his stubble tickled, and his warm breath made Sawyer feel almost too hot, too flushed. Sawyer did it again, pausing to outline the ridge of Jack's cock through the denim, and Jack jerked him faster. "Please," Jack groaned.  
  
He fumbled with the button, then the zipper, then finally pulled Jack's jeans and boxers down and found him already dripping. It had taken some getting used to, knowing he made another man hard and seeing it, taking that flesh in his hands. But by now, it just made him hotter seeing Jack's cock, pink and long and hard, hang there between his legs, knowing he was aching the same way he ached for Jack's touch. The way Jack responded once he got his hands on him—his whole body squirming and his breath coming fast—made him even hotter.  
  
"Oh, shit," Jack mumbled. "Shit. God."  
  
It was so good, and Sawyer was close to the edge. "Fuck me," he mumbled. "Jesus, Jack."  
  
Jack whimpered at that, and Sawyer watched as his eyes closed and he rocked his body slow into Sawyer's hand. Right then, something happened, something flipped inside Sawyer and he found himself saying it again, this time quite seriously:  
  
"Fuck me, Jack."  
  
"Umm," Jack moaned in response.  
  
Sawyer's hand slowed on Jack's cock, and he said into his ear, "I'm serious. I want you to fuck me."  
  
He was rewarded with a pair of wide, questioning brown eyes digging into his. "But we haven't…"  
  
"I'm well aware of that. But I want to."  
  
Jack hadn't taken his hands off Sawyer, but he'd all but stopped what he was doing. "You want me inside you?"  
  
"Yeah." He still didn't quite know what he was asking for, but he needed something, some way to have Jack go deeper, reach places maybe only he could find.  
  
"You sure?"  
  
Sawyer pulled his head down to kiss him hard. "Are you trying to talk yourself out of something here, Doc?"  
  
"No. But it might be easier if—"  
  
"I don't want easy. I want you to show me how to do this, and I want you inside me."  
  
Jack's eyes slid closed again for a second. "Okay. We'll go slow. I've gotta…Are you sure?"  
  
Sawyer sighed and gripped Jack's cock tighter. "Don't you want it?"  
  
Jack just laughed and let his head fall down against Sawyer's neck. "Yeah. God, yeah. I just… I always figured I'd have to do a lot of convincing before you'd let me have you like this."  
  
"This is what you want?"  
  
"Yeah," he sighed, pupils blown when he pulled his head up to look at him. "Do you know how this works?"  
  
"Generally."  
  
"You're probably not gonna come. We can do that after, but—"  
  
"This ain't about some orgasm, Jack."  
  
"I know," he said, but it seemed to take a minute before his words really sank in. Then Jack kissed him, taking over his whole mouth with a long, hard kiss that slowly gave way to an obscenely wet, teasing one, his tongue roaming all over his mouth. Finally, once Sawyer was about as hard as he thought he could be, just from all the tongue-fucking, Jack nibbled his way across his jaw to his ear and said, "It's not supposed to hurt." Then his voice took on that sure, firm doctor's tone that he'd found pretty comforting when he was healing up from the bullet wound: "It's gonna feel weird and maybe uncomfortable, but if it hurts, you tell me, okay?"  
  
"Okay."  
  
"And you've gotta be fucking patient."  
  
"Jack, stop stalling and get your hands on me."  
  
Luckily Jack carried a bottle of lotion in his pack, for medical emergencies. As Sawyer pulled off his t-shirt, then his boots and the tangle of pants and underwear at his ankles, he watched him walk back toward him, naked and hard, only the barest trace of that hesitancy he'd shown before, and he was once again a little amazed at the man. Sawyer had thought about this before, jerked off for the last three days thinking about something more than just hand jobs and Jack blowing him, but with Jack walking toward him like that, he couldn't distinguish between the anticipation and the fear of doing something so foreign. He reminded himself that it wouldn't be like with a woman. It would be strange at first. But knowing it meant he could pull Jack closer, into his body—wanting that enough to get over being so apprehensive—told him exactly how far gone he was. He hadn't even realized it until tonight, but with this, he'd just as good as admitted it. It wasn't like he could take it back, not from Jack and certainly not from himself, but he focused not on that fear but the immediate one, the sound of the lotion bottle snapping open.  
  
Jack set the bottle aside and climbed on top of Sawyer first, so they could get tangled up in each other's arms again, feel all the heat returning and building. Then Jack rolled off him and pulled him over onto his side as he let one hand slip down his chest and settle between his legs. He forced Sawyer to throw his top leg up and over Jack's, to open his hips like that to him, and then Jack just touched him while he kissed him, stroked his cock a few times and cradled his balls in his hand, rolling them over his palm. He alternated for a while teasing his cock and massaging his balls, then he slipped his finger down behind them to that aching spot of flesh and pressed just hard enough.  
  
When he finally let his finger brush over Sawyer's asshole, it was such light and teasing pressure he would've sworn he'd done it by accident if he didn't know better. He kissed him harder as that finger made slow circles around the sensitive skin there. It made his cock twitch, and Jack put one hand back on it, stroking his thumb over the head. By the time he had Sawyer melting into his touch, he stopped and slicked up his finger with lotion, then he pressed the tip of that finger against his entrance and said, "You sure?" Sawyer just nodded.  
  
When merely the tip of his finger probed in, it felt like an intrusion, but the rest of his body buzzed with arousal. He still had that deep down ache that made him shift his hips toward Jack's hand a little, weirdness be damned. Jack kissed him then slid down his body, and when he took Sawyer into his mouth, he also slipped that finger in a little farther. As Sawyer tried to loosen muscles he was unaccustomed to loosening that way, Jack let his finger slide in as far as it would go, then he pulled it back out and slipped it back in again, never for a moment letting up on the steady suck on Sawyer's cock. Sawyer couldn't do anything but lie there, his hands on Jack's head, trying to tell himself to calm the hell down.   
  
Jack must've felt it in his body, or maybe he was that intuitive, because he pushed him onto his back and straddled him again so he could be closer to him, all without removing that finger that was beginning to seem less and less intrusive. Jack pulled it gently out and pushed it back in until it slid pretty easily. Then he leaned over and touched his lips to Sawyer's neck.  
  
He said, "You're so tight. How does it feel?"  
  
"Like you've got your finger up my ass."  
  
Jack giggled and said, "Does it hurt?"  
  
Sawyer grinned and said, "How big do you think your fucking finger is, anyway?"  
  
Jack laughed again, and Sawyer was reminded of how strange it was to realize he could make Jack laugh like that, in a way nobody else could. Jack said, "You're doing fine. You're still hard, even, that big cock of yours. I could suck you for hours, I think."  
  
"You always talk dirty like this?"  
  
"Only when I'm this turned on." Then he crooked that finger inside him and Sawyer nearly bucked him off his lap. Too fucking much heat and pressure and sweet tingling ache. Whatever that spot was he hit, he'd done it on purpose, to see Sawyer just about come unglued. Then he did it again, and Sawyer groaned. Jack murmured, seductive in that cool way he had when he finally felt in control, "I do this right, and I can hit that every time."  
  
"Jesus Christ."  
  
"I'm gonna use two fingers now."  
  
"Yeah. Please."  
  
When Jack added that second finger, it felt like an invasion again, and this time it burned and he felt his erection flag a little, but Jack said, "Good. So good, Sawyer. You're gonna feel so amazing, you know that?" Sawyer clawed at Jack's lower back and finally opened his eyes again, and he believed it, if Jack's face was any indication. He believed all sorts of things about himself when Jack looked at him, and that might've been the scariest thing of all.   
  
Jack was still hard, and Sawyer could see his hips shift as if trying to find something to grind into, for relief. Sawyer reached out and touched his cock and Jack murmured at that, pulling out those two fingers and pressing them in again, slow. It didn't burn nearly as much this time.  
  
Jack took his time with those fingers, occasionally crooking one of them to hit that sensitive spot inside him, while Sawyer stroked him, just to see a shadow of helpless lust pass over his face. Jack said, "I need you to slick me up with lotion." He passed him the open bottle, and while Sawyer rubbed the cool lotion over him, his cock so slippery now that Jack squirmed a little, Sawyer felt suddenly fuller as Jack added a third finger and just held it there inside him.  
  
Jack said, "Does that hurt?"  
  
"Not hurt. Full, stretched out."  
  
"Good," he said, pulling those fingers out and pushing them in again. "That's the way it's supposed to feel. You ready?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Get on your hands and knees. I promise it'll be the easiest way."  
  
Sawyer could only nod. He'd come this far, but, really, having another man's dick inside him was a whole new thing altogether. Sawyer felt the slick head of Jack's cock pressed up against his crack as Jack took him in hand and gave him a few firm tugs. Then he let his cock go and pulled him open and then there was just the long, desperately hot stroke of Jack's cock splitting him, shoving in farther than Sawyer thought possible.  
  
His dick did wilt at that pressure, but what he was feeling wasn't horrible. Jack's body was flush with his as Jack leaned over his back, not moving, just letting Sawyer's burning muscles release like they'd been releasing around his fingers. "My God," he whispered. "I wanna move but—"  
  
"I'm okay."  
  
He breathed hard against Sawyer's back and said, probably smiling sheepishly, "This is gonna be over fast."  
  
"I'm fine. Just fuck me."  
  
When Jack finally withdrew, pulling all the way out except the head, Sawyer felt a new sort of burn, one that was almost good. When Jack thrust in again, with a long low grunt, Sawyer felt his cock surge with blood, fully hard again, and he only knew he wanted Jack to do it again, even if it felt strange and awkward and too full. The slide was so good, and it made the ache in his belly even worse, but Jack was gripping his hips and pushing in again and again, carefully but purposefully, and he didn't want him to ever stop.  
  
Jack murmured, "You're so…fucking beautiful…never thought…this good…oh Jesus…so tight. How does it feel?"  
  
"Good. Good, Jack."  
  
"Want me to touch you?"  
  
"No, just keep— _ohhh fuck_ ," he groaned as Jack pulled his hips back a little and everything was suddenly perfect. Jack was thrusting right into that spot, right over it with every stroke that filled him and then left him wanting to be filled again. He could only let his head hang between his arms and watch his cock jerk as Jack drove deeper. "Faster, God."  
  
"I don't wanna—"  
  
"Feels so good, Jack, just fuck me."  
  
He could see Jack's thighs nearly coming into contact with his own. He could see his balls hanging there under that cock that was trying to split him in two while at the same time thrust right against that swollen and sensitive spot, and he needed Jack to keep pounding into him just as bad as he needed relief from such an overwhelming sensation. Sawyer closed his eyes and imagined the look of Jack's dick sliding into him. He couldn't exactly picture it, but feeling it made him want to see it. He was never fucking like this again, he thought, where he couldn't watch the way he wanted to. But he could feel and listen, and Jack's hands grasped him tighter as he hips jerked harder and he groaned with every thrust. Sawyer was used to that. Jack usually moaned like that when he was about to come. But then Jack started talking again, and it made Sawyer wish to God he would touch him.  
  
"Oh God…shit…so good, Sawyer…needed this so bad…wanted you like this…since the first time…oh _God_ …since the first time I saw you…so beautiful…so _uhhhh_ ," he groaned and fucked him hard and fast and moaned incoherently until he came with a shuddering gasp. For a moment, Jack stilled himself inside him, leaned over his back so sweaty and heavy and impossibly warm, then he pulled out and Sawyer couldn't remember the last time he was this fucking hard up and desperate to be touched.   
  
"On your back again," Jack said as his breath came back to him. Before Sawyer's head had even come to rest on the blanket, Jack slid two fingers back inside him, the tip of one pressed hard into that spot, then he closed his lips around Sawyer's cock and took him about as deep as Sawyer thought it was possible to swallow a man's cock. Normally, Sawyer liked his blow jobs slower, more teasing, and Jack knew that; he also must've known Sawyer just needed to come now—and hard. He sucked him with steady pressure and bobbed his head up and down on Sawyer's cock while that finger probed and probed at him. He was too overwhelmed to say anything, or even moan and groan, but when he suddenly felt himself right at the edge, ready to tumble over, he grunted and his eyes flew open and he came, watching his cock pumping down Jack's throat while Sawyer made something that sounded to his own ears like a long, guttural groan.  
  
For a moment, Jack knelt there between his legs and got his breath back, but then he soon threw his body over Sawyer's left side, legs slung over his hip and head against his chest. Sawyer had already guessed he liked to cuddle up like that, but Jack hadn't ever tried to, not in any serious way. Sawyer wanted him to this time, and he found that nothing was like this feeling of flushed warmth all over his skin and Jack's sweat-slicked limbs trapping his, his movements languid and heavy except his mouth which fluttered over Sawyer's neck.  
  
Finally, Jack said, "Was that okay?"  
  
"Not what I expected."  
  
"How?"  
  
"I didn't think I'd like it so much. You must be pretty good at that."  
  
He was surprised to see Jack blush and sheepishly grin. "I really should have got you off first. Would've made that easier."  
  
"Who the hell wants easy? I knew it, though."  
  
"Knew what?"  
  
"I knew you'd fuck like that. As big and strong and repressed as you are."  
  
"Repressed?"  
  
"You hold too much back. Nice to see you let it go."  
  
"Sawyer, there's a very good reason it took me so long to let go like that with you." They both knew what they meant with _let go_ , and it had nothing to do with manic handjobs in the jungle or stolen moments of forceful kissing and groping.  
  
"What?" Sawyer asked. He found that he wanted the answer, and he was sure, with his openness now, Jack wouldn't be afraid to give it.  
  
"I didn't want to scare you away."  
  
"Do I look scared?"  
  
It was a serious answer, and he knew it, but he giggled and said, "No, you look fucked-out. You tired?"  
  
"No. Pretty damn awake, actually. Wanna take a swim?"  
  
Jack grumbled something incoherent but decidedly annoyed against his shoulder.   
  
Sawyer said, "I can't help it. I'm fucking jittery. It always feel like that?"  
  
"Not for me. But that's pretty normal, I think. Besides, you always get jittery after you come."  
  
"Not like this. That was…different."  
  
"Better?"  
  
"Oh, hell yeah. Better." He nudged him off his torso, poking a finger into the pocket of fat on his hip. "Come on, get your lazy ass up."  
  
"Where are we gonna swim this time of night?"  
  
"Anywhere we want." Jack sighed. "Up the beach. That cove where we were yesterday."  
  
*****  
  
Jack was glad for the fuzzy good feeling in his body as they walked through the jungle, because it kept him from obsessing. He knew he should worry. Even if Sawyer had liked what they'd done, that didn't mean he was in love with him. It didn't mean this couldn't all blow up in his face tomorrow. He'd seen it happen before; he'd had it happen to him, too. There was always the story about the straight man that let another man fuck him and then absolutely freaked out about it. But he should've remembered something about Sawyer: once he made up his mind about something, he would stick to it. Now, it might take him a hell of a long time to admit it, but he wouldn't change his mind.  
  
Jack had been the one to bring up the subject of the fake gun con, back when he wasn't completely sure he could trust Sawyer but wanted to. He knew he wanted Sawyer's hands on him, that he really wanted Sawyer to fuck him so long and hard he forgot about the rest of the world, but he didn't know if it went beyond that overwhelming chemical pull between them. Eventually, though, he realized that he needed Sawyer, all of him, and not just because he wanted him. He was only beginning to learn what Sawyer could be for him. What he didn't know was what he could be for Sawyer.  
  
The moon was obscenely bright as they broke through the treeline and their boots sank into sand. Sawyer stopped and looked up at the sky for a long time, then he nodded his head, as if to himself.  
  
"Doc," he said quietly. "I think we should tell them."  
  
"About the guns?"  
  
"No. About this. You and me."  
  
"But what is this?"  
  
"Seems like we're together."  
  
"Yeah." He was surprised to find how important that label—however vague—was to his peace of mind, to have confirmed what he had been feeling, especially after what Sawyer let him do. But he still had to ask: "You're sure?"  
  
"It's time."  
  
"Won't they know about the guns, then?"  
  
"Maybe, maybe not." Sawyer paused, then he said firmly, "You let me worry about the guns from now on."  
  
Jack looked into his eyes and found it easy to answer, "Okay." He should've been nervous about how willing he was to let Sawyer take over, but he wasn't. It was simply a relief. But he was less certain about the rest of it. "How will we tell them? You sure?"  
  
"If you ask me that one more time tonight, I'm gonna kick your ass. Yes, I'm sure. Ain't you?"  
  
"No."  
  
For a moment, he was sure he'd screwed up colossally. What if he'd just frayed the only thin, tenuous connection Sawyer had to his feelings. But by this point, he really should've understood things better. Sawyer just smirked at him and said, "Well, you ain't never sure about anything, are you? Seems like you'd be used to that by now."  
  
Sawyer began to strip off his clothes again, and as Jack watched him head down to the water, he just smiled, trying to stave off the ache in his heart. Thankfully, his head was clearing, and now the stars looked so bright above the dark water, almost as bright as Sawyer's skin glowing in the moonlight, all these things telling him by the knot in his stomach that he really was absolutely in love with him.   
  
Sawyer wasn't in love with him, not yet, but whatever this was would hold. It had to. Sawyer had been right: he wasn't ever sure about anything anymore. But this one thing was out of his hands now and firmly in Sawyer's, and he was slowly learning, under that vast, clear sky, that this new way of balancing his life might be better—because Sawyer was better.


End file.
